


Once More, With Feeling

by tlkdr (SlimeQueen)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Body Worship, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Eddie's Absolutely Feral, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Sharing a Bed, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Top Richie Tozier, Touch-Starved Eddie Kaspbrak, Virgin Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28658484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlimeQueen/pseuds/tlkdr
Summary: The truth of the matter is this; Eddie and Richie do the Repression Tango like it’s nobody’s business.His feelings have been clear since Richie stepped into the Jade of the Orient and everything had come rushing back, their banter warm and familiar.And Richie had reciprocated once, he’d been sure of it, letting Eddie shove into his space and nag him whilst covering his knobby scraped knees in colorful band-aids while Richie looked down at him with dopey adoring eyes—and though Richie’s older now, better at hiding parts of himself when he needs to, Eddie catches that same emotion in his face when Richie straightens up and turns to him, finds him standing there in his soft old pullover and shorts like a long-faded memory.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 34
Kudos: 119





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> mom said its MY turn to do the post canon LA horny fic!!  
> 
> 
> (cw: canon-typical homophobia and implied/ref abuse from Myra and Sonia, Eddie’s body image issues, etc)

In the six hours of flight time between New York and Richie, Eddie does what he does best and worries.

Being back in Derry those three long months ago had been like a weird acid trip, Richie tells him one night soon after Eddie’s divorce papers are finalized, slurred and quiet on the phone. He’s drunk, and Eddie has to do the enormous mental task of tacking along the word _again_ to the end of that thought.

Eddie’s never been anywhere near acid, but he understands nonetheless. In Derry, it had been deceptively easy to become a closer approximation of the thirteen-year-old Eddie Kaspbrak he’d left behind all those years ago, babied and teased by his friends, none more than Richie and his affinity for making Eddie’s head hurt with lame jokes and impressions.

Derry had been both regression and progress; for a moment down there in the dark tunnels, he’d felt like a child again, small and helpless against something much bigger than himself. It’s a feeling he’d become extremely acquainted with recently, as the memories of his childhood had come flooding back. There had been so many things he’d sworn he’d never be able to forget, that he logically s _houldn’t_ have forgotten, that had been lost to him. To _It_.

His childhood had come back to him bittersweetly, everything from his overbearing mother with a freakish similarity to Myra that somehow he’d never noticed before, to the way Richie’s dark eyes had softened when he’d crowed, “ _Eddie Spaghetti, shove your fat ass over_ ,” and clumsily swung his lanky legs into the hammock ( _their_ hammock, Eddie remembers a week later; it had always been their secret, special place, where they could sit close and blame it on the lack of space, pressed up against each other warm and clammy from the humid summer, anxious to see if anyone else would comment on the way their legs tangled).

And Richie. Richie, who comes back into his life so bizarrely unchanged and yet so completely different that it has Eddie’s heart reeling, says into the phone, his deep voice hoarse from his show that night, uncharacteristically quiet and serious, “Come stay with me in L.A.”

Eddie turns over in his bed to face the window. The blinds aren’t fully closed, and though his apartment is on the tenth floor, that does nothing to drown out the chaos of the city outside, and suddenly Eddie feels as restless as New York.

Freshly divorced, thinking about sticky summer afternoons at the peak of adolescence, Eddie closes his eyes and imagines Richie laying in his own bed on the other side of the country, far too big and extravagant for just himself. “ _No way_ ,” Bev had cried, laughing herself silly when Richie had nonchalantly pulled out a black card to pay for bodega sandwiches last month when they’d visited him in New York, Bev and Ben claiming Eddie’s guest room and leaving Richie the couch, “ _They pay you this much to stand around and act like yourself?_ ”

Eddie had come out to grab some water in the middle of the night. He’d still been half asleep, not thinking about how there were three other people staying in his home, and in passing Richie on the couch, he’d nearly had a heart attack.

He’d looked ridiculous with his long legs draped over the leather arm of the sofa, mouth slack in his sleep, glasses tossed sometime in the evening on Eddie’s coffee table. And yet, it had been enough to make Eddie hesitate.

For a long time, Eddie had stood in the doorframe of his room sipping at his water and watching Richie sleep uncomfortably on the sofa, taking in the slope of his shoulder, so much wider now that he’d had a chance to grow into his lanky height, the bareness of his feet, pale and bony where they stuck out of the blanket Eddie had left neatly folded for him.

Then, like with most things pertaining to Richie, Eddie had folded the image away into some corner of his brain before he thought too hard about it.

At present, as Richie’s offer spins in his brain like an out-of-control carousel, the memory of Richie sleeping in his living room barrels into mind like an intrusive thought.

There’s so much of him that just wants to see Richie. Just make sure that he is real, that he won’t slip through the cracks once again when Eddie loosens up and lets himself be vulnerable. They’d lost so much time in the middle.

“Eds?” Richie says a little bit hesitantly, “Are you good? I was sort of—"

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, breathless, “yeah, I will.”

And less than a month later, Eddie’s packing up what few belongings he wants to keep and moving all the way across the country.

* * *

Richie’s house is as extravagant as Eddie had expected, but three times filthier.

In the very back of a cushy gated neighborhood by the ocean that Eddie tries his best not to scoff at, Richie’s house is a huge, classical thing, imposing and lit yellow from within. His sportscar is much sleeker than the tank of an Escalade Eddie had owned in New York, and definitely a million times more dangerous, were he to crash. Eddie tells him as much over the purr of the engine and Richie grins as he speeds down a miraculously empty street, “It never sinks in that you’re real until you open your mouth, Eds.”

With that grin, the last of Eddie’s uncertainty over all this fades—moving all the way across the country without any plans, his life profoundly changed at the less-than-tender age of forty, to live with someone he’d once been… been _something_ with. Not a thing, really, but not nothing. He’d never call it nothing.

They’ve always been able to fall back into rhythm with each other in an alarmingly short amount of time. Whether it was after Richie’s parents had sent him to summer camp for eight whole weeks when they were eleven, or after a forgotten twenty-seven years, catching eyes over mediocre Chinese food in the midst of everyone’s chatter, something always slotted back into place just _so_ , and everything would be alright again in the universe because Eddie remembers, oh, Richie exists.

He had come to the airport with a ridiculous sign in his hands reading _Spaghetti_ on it in obnoxious red letters, but he’d crumpled it into his pocket to curl his arms over Eddie’s shoulders, pulling him in for a quick hug that had made Eddie’s pulse jump before taking two of his bags and guiding them towards the parking garage, chattering the whole time about L.A traffic.

In the house, Richie throws his keys on the cluttered kitchen island and gestures vaguely as he walks with Eddie past the foyer and sleek, open concept kitchen to the sprawling living room, littered with empty bottles and dirty laundry, crumpled papers and broken pens.

“You live like this?” Eddie deadpans, dodging a small tower of empty cans, “Like some kind of frat house?”

Richie rolls his eyes, and oh, his eyes aren’t magnified behind his thick glasses because Richie doesn’t wear glasses out in California. This isn’t Richie who cracks lame jokes across Eddie in the hammock in their clubhouse until Eddie kicks a foot out and slams a heel into his shoulder, this is L.A Richie who wears huge dramatic sunglasses to avoid being spotted, who sells out shows every weekend.

“Relax, Kaspbrak. The housekeepers come on Mondays.”

“ _Housekeepers_ ,” Eddie says, dazed. Plural.

The guest room Richie shows him to is thankfully clean. Eddie gives it a perfunctory once-over while he sets his luggage down and Richie lingers in the doorway, watching him.

“Early dinner?” Richie says finally, “You wanna get something to eat before you pass out from jetlag?”

Eddie turns to face him finally, and finds him outlined in the doorway, golden from the light of the room, silhouetted against the hallway behind him. Richie has one hip against the wall, arms crossed loosely over his broad chest. The bright green leafy print of his shirt is slightly garish but somehow endearing, collar undone just one too many buttons to expose a fair bit of his chest.

“Sure,” Eddie says, throat suddenly a little too dry. “I’m going to shower. You call in whatever takeout you want, just make sure it’s not too spicy.”

Richie cracks a slight smile. “Right, right,” he says with a nonchalant wave of his hand, “and try not to slip in the shower, Grandma.”

“Jeez, Rich,” Eddie shoots back, pushing him gently into the hall, “I know how much you like old ladies’ titties, but if you wanted to help one shower you should just be straight up and ask.”

Richie makes a face at him but allows Eddie to shut the door in his face.

As Richie slinks back downstairs, Eddie turns to the room once again. While the rest of the house had been littered with trash, the guest room had been coordinated carefully, all dark wood and glossy finish. Years ago, Richie’s furniture must have been bought and styled by someone with meticulous taste. The bed is a wide, old wooden thing, heavy and beautiful and much too big for Eddie alone. He tosses his jacket on one of the armchairs before making his way to the en suite for a much-desired shower.

In the mirror above the sink, his face is pale and drawn, eyes dark and brows solemn. The tired, lined face in his reflection is a far cry from the sun-golden freckled one in his memories.

He loathes the thought, but it strikes him hot like a slap to the face—an insecurity that runs so deep and aches so raw that he’d hardly dared to let it penetrate the swelling hopefulness in his chest when he had agreed to move out to L.A.

He is not the same as Richie remembers.

He has not been for a long time, if he thinks hard about it. Returning to Derry had been a wake-up call, and though the memories and emotions had come back, each sending him reeling with the enormity of remembrance, Eddie can’t shake the feeling that Richie will laugh and reveal at some point that the whole thing is a sick joke and he wants Eddie to go back to New York—and Richie wouldn’t do that, he _knows_ he wouldn’t.

But the thought remains.

Scar tissue knots ugly over his chest, horrible and just a few inches from fatal—miraculous, the doctors had called it at the time. Standing in the warm light of Richie’s guest bathroom, shirtless and skinny and unimpressive, he doesn’t feel particularly miraculous. Only inadequate.

He’d been vibrant once, alive and young and happy, despite the anxieties caused by his mother. The tired man in the mirror stares back at him, and suddenly all Eddie can wonder is what Richie sees, exactly, when he looks at him with that simmering intensity in his eyes.

He has to force himself to look away from the mirror and climb into the quickly steaming shower, letting water beat over his narrow shoulders until they’re pink from the heat. And then he stands there a few moments more.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, feeling much cleaner and in his element, Eddie pads from the room dressed in shorts and an old pullover, feet bare on Richie’s wood floors, downstairs to where Richie sits in the living room.

On the wide black leather sectional, Richie’s long legs sprawl haphazardly over the seats, his back against the corner seat before a low stylish glass coffee table housing several empty beer bottles and an extremely flat and wide wall-mounted television.

The sofa is so big that it dwarfs even Richie’s tall frame, making him look oddly lonely sitting there by himself. An island of man in an endless sea of slick black leather. Eddie sits delicately on the arm.

“You know that your house is giving me mildly alcoholic vibes, right?” Eddie says, and yelps the next second when Richie kicks out and tries to push him off his precarious perch.

His fingers are already itching to begin picking up after Richie, but he tries to hold off, at least for tonight. Instead, he slides onto the seat adjacent Richie, crossing his legs under him. The running shorts that run up his thighs are reminiscent of the kind he’d worn many times as a teenager, red and quite short on Eddie’s lean legs, accented with white drawstrings.

Richie’s eyes drop to his thighs for a moment when he tugs them lower, and Eddie wonders if he’s remembering a similar sight from their childhood.

“You know you’re the homeless freeloader living in my guestroom, right?” Richie says finally, raising one dark eyebrow.

Eddie reaches out automatically to sock Richie’s shoulder, but something goes wrong and suddenly Richie’s holding his wrist between long, startlingly warm fingers. Eddie stares down at his narrow wrist. Richie’s hands are so pale, stark white and rather delicate compared to the rest of him. When he’d been younger, they’d been eerie, far too elongated just like the rest of his limbs, spidery and overgrown, tendons pulling taut against his skin when his knuckles flexed, but he’s since grown into them, his hands long and strong and elegant now. Eddie wonders what would happen if he held on tighter.

He pulls his wrist back a little too late.

Richie retreats into the corner of the sofa again. “You gonna start paying rent?” he says under his breath, which reminds Eddie that he’s Richie fucking Tozier and an asshole of the highest order.

“No,” Eddie says, fixing him with an unimpressed look, “I’m actually planning on becoming your trophy wife.”

“Yeah?” Richie says, raising one dark eyebrow, “You can start as a live-in housekeeper and try to work your way up by seducing your boss. Do you come with a little maid outfit?”

“Yeah, I got it from your sister, dumbass,” Eddie growls, and half of him wants to throw himself on Richie and start a scuffle like he’s done a million times before, but then he remembers that he is an entire forty years old and folds his hands in his lap instead. “What did you get for dinner? Better not be anything weird like that pub you made us go to in Queens.”

“Bev was just as enthusiastic about that pub as me,” Richie complains, “S’not my fault you get food poisoning at the drop of a hat.”

“Beverly was like, four margaritas and half a pitcher of beer in, she was only agreeing with you because you guys are like the world’s worst category five hurricane when you drink together.”

Richie’s grin turns teasing. “What about when you and I drink?”

“Apocalyptic.”

The intercom buzzes then, and Richie rolls his eyes fondly and calls over his shoulder as he ambles towards the door, “We got Greek food, by the way. You wanna beer so we can start off the apocalypse, Spaghetti? You and me, Mad Max style through the abandoned Hollywood Hills?”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says indignantly. While Richie’s tipping their deliverer, Eddie pushes the ashtray on the table away to make space for them to eat, sweeping some cigarette butts and ashes to the side with a tissue from the nearly empty box on the center of the table.

How could he forget? It always gets so much easier to breath under the care of Richie’s easygoing wide smile and gentle ribbing. Already, he feels a smile pull unwittingly at his mouth as Richie returns with his arms full of plastic bags and two beer cans, easily dwarfed between his long fingers.

Over dinner, Eddie loosens up gradually until he’s joking along with Richie about the tzatziki being the _exact_ texture of cum (well, Richie jokes and Eddie makes an exaggerated retching noise, to which Richie replies in a lecherous voice, “ _yeah,_ baby, you’re gagging for it,” and Eddie kicks a leg out and catches him in the thigh), sipping at his cold beer and relishing the carbonation bubbling down his throat. He’s never enjoyed the taste much, but it’s a good way to cut the salt from his shawarma, and he finds himself reaching the end of it more easily than any beer he’s had before, half due to the fact that Richie’s an excellent drinking partner.

There is still so much to be unsure of, but Richie gives him a fond smile when Eddie launches into an expletive-heavy rant about some old businessman who’d definitely been giving him eyes during his flight, and Eddie thinks that at least of this, of Richie, he is sure of.

* * *

Eddie’s still running on East Coast time, and the sun has barely sunk below the horizon, washing the whole sky a myriad of deep peachy oranges and lurid indigos when he yawns, jetlag weighing down his eyes, and tells Richie he’s about to pass out.

“Go to bed,” Richie says, gently nudging him towards the stairs. “I’ll clean up, don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t forget—”

“The empty cans, yes Eddie, I’ve got them,” Richie rolls his eyes good naturedly and grins. “Goodnight, weirdo.”

Eddie tugs at the hem of his sweater and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He feels awkward, somehow, watching Richie clean up after him for once, neatly tossing everything into the paper takeout bag.

They haven’t talked about what’s been left unsaid for so long.

“Richie,” he says, soft.

The truth of the matter is this; Eddie and Richie do the Repression Tango like it’s nobody’s business.

His feelings have been clear since Richie stepped into the Jade of the Orient and everything had come rushing back, their banter warm and familiar. Eddie got a _divorce_ and moved across the country, and here they still are, dancing around the subject like they had as kids, awkward and flustered.

And Richie had reciprocated, he’d been sure of it, letting Eddie shove into his space and nag him whilst covering his knobby scraped knees in colorful band-aids with his brows pinched together in a frown with no heat, Richie looking down at him with dopey adoring eyes, and though Richie’s older now, better at hiding parts of himself when he needs to, Eddie catches that same emotion in his face when Richie straightens up and turns to him, finds him standing there in his soft old pullover and shorts like a long-faded memory.

They’re still teetering on that fine line between something and everything, and it’s been so long since Eddie’s been nervous like this.

Eddie takes a step forward, and then another, and another. He clasps Richie’s face in his hands, stretching onto the tips of his toes, and, cheeks burning, he brushes his mouth against Richie’s jaw.

Richie’s eyes are wide when he pulls away, his own face flushed a soft shade of pink.

“Goodnight,” he tells Richie hastily, and spins on his heel, heading upstairs so he can go think about the scrape of Richie’s stubble against his lips on repeat in the sanctity of his room.

Feeling rather pleased with himself, he gets ready for bed grinning like an idiot, like it’s just setting in that he’s _here_ , that Richie still looks at him with his heart in his hands, and it’s like something settles inside him, something heavy and warm and familiar.

Even when he crawls into the empty bed, feeling much too small and alone for the massive frame, there’s a dizzy sort of residual excitement in him, a promise of ‘ _I can do that again’_.

Eddie’s just calming himself enough for the drowsiness to come creeping back into his limbs when his phone goes off. He presses the phone to his ear without checking the caller. “Hello?”

“Eddie?” Beverly’s warm voice is a familiar thing. Something in him relaxes as she barrels right on, “I thought I told you to _call_ me when you get out there to Richie’s, you asshole. Ben and I were going to come help you, but God forbid we try to actually be good friends.”

Eddie feels a smile pull unwittingly over his mouth. “Nice to hear from you, Beverly.”

“Don’t ‘ _nice to hear from you Beverly’_ me,” she says exasperatedly, but then Eddie hears her sigh deeply and knows she’s let it go. “How are you? How is Richie? Was your flight okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Bev,” Eddie rolls his eyes good-naturedly at the ceiling. “Richie’s… Richie, as always, but somehow a million times more California-fied, if that makes sense. How’s the honeymoon phase? Still going strong?”

Beverly and Ben had been all over each other when they’d visited Eddie in New York with Richie, handsy in the back of Eddie’s car, leaning into each other’s space like they belonged there, exchanging longing glances when they’d think Eddie and Richie weren’t watching. It had been equally as sickening and adorable to be in the same vicinity as the two.

Bev’s voice softens into something so tender that longing echoes in Eddie’s chest in response. “Oh, Eds,” she sighs. “Sometimes I wonder how this could be real. How I could deserve him.”

Beverly understands in a way the others do not. While their situations had been fairly different, the way Bev had looked at him over the table back at the Jade with those wide, nervous eyes when Bill had asked about her now ex-husband had been a countenance he’d known well. He’d seen it reflected back at himself in the mirror countless times, whenever his phone would start blowing up and he would look down at it, anxiety settling heavily in his chest like a conditioned response at the letters forming Myra’s name on the caller ID.

Bev’s tough. A hell of a lot tougher than Eddie had ever been, but they’re in this together—putting their lives back together in the aftermath, and when she had visited him in New York, her own divorce messier than Eddie’s by far, an entire fashion empire between her and Tom to divide up, and one night while Richie had gone out to grab smokes from the corner store and Ben had been in the shower, Bev had clasped his hands in her own, sure and warm and strong. Her eyes had been open, understanding, and she’d said soft, “It’s hard to unlearn these things, isn’t it?”

After a minute, he’d said quietly back, “Yeah. Yeah, it is, Bevvie.”

He’d teared up then, even while she’d been so brave, her own blue eyes resolute, and she’d held his hands in hers for the next twenty minutes until Richie had come back with his arms full of Thai takeout and Eddie had to wipe at his lash-line quickly, blaming allergies and high pollen counts for his swollen eyes.

Eddie stares at the blinds he’d left ajar. The sound of the ocean is a distant, comforting thing, though unfamiliar to Eddie, who’d lived in Brooklyn for most of his adult life. If you could call it life. He had simply been going through the motions for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to live truly. For nearly all of those twenty-seven years, he might as well have been a dead man. Does he deserve this second chance at life? The thought’s crossed his own mind enough times only within the past day.

“You do,” Eddie says sincerely as he can, and wills his voice not to crack over the words. “We both do.”

If he can persuade Bev, maybe he can convince himself.

* * *

Eddie starts working from home.

It’s his therapist’s idea initially, because he’d told her about moving out to L.A with Richie the day after he’d made up his mind—he had made a special appointment solely for that, still half convinced that the split-second decision could be chalked up to a momentary lapse in judgement.

(“ _Or_ ,” she’d suggested in that calm therapist voice that never fails to aggravate Eddie like nothing else. “ _It could be good for you to have a change in pace. You told me this Richie guy was the best thing that ever happened to you, didn’t you?_ ” Like he needs a reminder of _that_ breakdown of an appointment.)

He renegotiates his contract and winds up with a bit of a lower salary than he’d made in New York, but Richie sinks into the sofa next to him and grins so wide when Eddie tells him that Eddie can’t even bring himself to care. He gets the home office because Richie doesn’t use it anyways, and sets up the meagre things he’d brought from New York: his laptop and a cute little potted plant from Stanley, some stationary and his business cards.

He’d worked long hours before, because he hadn’t seen a reason not to. Myra didn’t care much—she’d been too busy micromanaging every other facet of his life, so Eddie had become used to spending most of his time with her or working. It had even sort of been akin to relief, working himself down to the bone just so he wouldn’t have to be with her.

Yet when he thinks about living with Richie, to his surprise, working from home doesn’t seem the unnecessarily complicated task it had seemed to him years ago when it had first become an option.

He’s tired, he realizes sometimes in the mornings when he wakes up with aching bones and twinging scars and his body protests vehemently at the thought of getting out of bed. He’s old.

And Richie barely works during the week anyways, Eddie finds out the next day when the housekeepers come, as promised, to tidy up the chaos of Richie’s home. Mostly, he lazes around the house and works on bits, writes when inspiration strikes, and bothers Eddie.

Eddie finds him standing at the bay window overlooking the pool in the backyard around midday a few days after he moves in, clad only in his boxers, and drinking a mug of coffee, staring off into the distance for a good three minutes before Eddie interrupts very loudly, “Motherfucker, what is _that_ ,” and points at Richie’s bicep.

Richie’s very unclothed but not bare bicep, he can’t help but note, and when Richie turns to face him, it takes all of Eddie’s self-control not to gawk.

He’s seen Richie in even less before, ( _It’s not that big_ , his head fills in Stan saying dryly), but Richie is broad now, soft in some places and still lanky in others. When he catches Eddie looking at his bicep, he shifts and the muscles pull taut, the veins visible in his arms under the hair there.

There is a tattoo there. On Richie’s inner bicep, there is a stark black tattoo of a turtle, small enough to be hidden by a shirt sleeve but big enough to be recognizable for what it is.

Richie looks down at the tattoo like he’d forgotten about it. “Well, it’s definitely not a stupid souvenir from my exactly one semester of college, that’s for sure.”

“You didn’t finish college? _You_?”

Richie’s grades had always been the best out of all of them, somehow. It had been part of what had made him so enigmatic to Eddie in his younger years; Richie Tozier who got straight A’s despite being sent out to sit in the hall for misbehaving during half his classes.

“Eddie,” Richie says pointedly, and gestures around them to the cavernous house, full of light and sleek beautiful furniture. Which is fair. “And don’t pretend that you didn’t sneak out just as much as I used to play hooky, you little delinquent. I would pay to see the things you probably got up to in college. Bet Mrs. K would be rolling in her grave.”

Eddie frowns. “Not really,” he says a little awkwardly, and rolls his shoulders, suddenly desperate for something to do other than talk about this. His spine cracks loudly.

Most of his college experience had been mediocre, to say the least, with a particularly dead love life. Eddie knows they've all been through their fair share of shit in the past twenty-seven years, but his own issues still make him a little squeamish, a little shameful when he thinks about them too hard.

The fact of the matter is that Eddie had been too anxiety-ridden, too conditioned to need codependency by the time he'd forgotten Derry, that when he'd gotten to college, he'd been something of a mess. Three times he had moved out and moved back in with his mother until finally she’d died, and then he’d gone and replaced her with Myra.

Richie’s still looking at him, expectantly, so he deflects quickly, “Don’t you have something to be doing?”

“Nope,” Richie says smugly, making his way over to the kitchen to grab a refill on his coffee, and after a moment, Eddie follows. “I have a show in San Francisco this weekend and I’ve already got it down. Now tell me about all your slutty, slutty college escapades, deviant.”

“Pour me a mug,” he says instead, settling on one of the barstools on the kitchen island.

“How do you like it?” Richie asks, and then cocks his eyebrow, an amused expression flitting over his face, but before he can say whatever unhinged dirty thing he’s thinking, Eddie answers quickly.

“Sweet,” he tells Richie, and when he gets that lecherous glint in his eyes, Eddie quickly adds, “And grab the fucking creamer instead of saying something vulgar, or you’ll never hear about me in college.”

Thankfully, Richie actually does what he says without commentary, pouring out creamer until Eddie holds up a hand for him to stop, and then slides the large novelty mug over to him.

“Why do you have so much of your own merch?” Eddie asks, looking at the neat little logo along the side, which reads _TRASHMOUTH TOUR ’05_. It’s only one of the many pieces from tours and sets past that he’s seen around the house.

“It accumulates,” Richie rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "Alright, I'm setting the scene. New York, mid-nineties. A very young and sexy twenty-something Eddie Kaspbrak is getting ready on a Friday night to—?"

Eddie flushes a little. "Study," he admits, and to his surprise, Richie walks around the island to him, and settles on the other barstool, their knees knocking together gently. He attaches his eyes firmly to the steaming mug between his laced fingers instead of Richie.

"Come on, how about the juicy stuff?"

He shrugs after a second. “There’s literally nothing to tell.”

He watches as Richie processes, and takes a sip of his coffee when all he's met with is silence for a beat longer.

“Hang on,” Richie says finally, realization settling over his features, “what did you do, save it for marriage? That’s definitely not wh—”

“No, Rich,” Eddie interrupts, pushing aside the way the words make him want to squirm, continuing as frankly as possible. “Even till now, I mean.”

And Richie just stares.

Eddie takes another sip of his coffee, watching him carefully over the rim of his mug.

“Even till now?” Richie says, and he sounds breathless, like he’s been hit in the stomach. “What do you mean, even till now?”

He frowns. “You know what I mean. Don’t pretend like you don’t, you dick. I just never really…” he trails off awkwardly.

Eddie’s fully aware of the fact that Richie’s slept around, mostly with women but sometimes with men too, that he’s had girlfriends and once or twice, men he’s repeatedly hooked up with. He also knows that none of them have lasted long, that Derry flipped Richie’s life upside down just as much as Eddie’s, and takes a moment to ground himself in the present, in the kitchen— _their_ kitchen, he asserts stubbornly, where Richie’s sitting right next to him, still staring at him in surprise.

“It’s,” Richie starts to say, but then fumbles, “I mean, I just didn’t expect. Fuck, Eddie.”

“The exact opposite, actually,” he says with a wan smile. “It’s okay, Rich, it’s as funny and pathetic as you think it is. You can joke about it.”

“ _No_ ,” Richie says vehemently, and there’s an uncharacteristic solemnness in his eyes. “Eddie, what the fuck, I’m not— that’s the _last_ thing you are, dude. It’s not funny, it just. It just is. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. Doesn’t change a thing.”

He gives Eddie a look that plainly reads, _doesn’t change a thing between us_.

Eddie hates a pity party, and he’s grateful for Richie not saying it out loud. In fact, he’d expected Richie to laugh about it, to question him or—or _something_.

But Richie’s like that. He’s always been like that, as carefree and flexible as flowing water, not letting the little things bother him the way Eddie does.

But then Richie asserts, "And I mean, if you don't—if you never want—"

"No!" Eddie says too quickly, and his cheeks burn from his own eagerness. Richie's eyes go wide, and Eddie's already hastily overexplaining, "It's not that I didn't—didn't want to, I was just. You know."

_In a pseudo-Oedipal marriage with a_ woman _while brainwashed to forget you_. No big deal.

Half of him is still reeling from telling Richie a thing so previously secretive without any fanfare, can't even believe that Richie _knows_ now, that he's privy to something about Eddie no one else in the world knows. Abruptly, he realizes they're both equally as flushed, staring awkwardly away from each other.

He waves a flippant hand. "But tell me about San Francisco?"

Richie blinks owlishly. “Right!” he says, and shoves his glasses up his nose, “Shit, San Francisco. I have a show, and now you're here and I should definitely have told my manager or something about this whole roommate development. I'm absolute shit at planning this stuff, oh god."

Taking his phone from his pocket, he quickly taps something out. "You're coming with me, right?"

"Well _yeah_ ," Eddie can't help but say immediately. It's not exactly a secret that Richie's career is a major hot topic amongst all of them, from the deep smoldering pride in Eddie's chest—remnants of the rainy days of their childhood, spent hidden away in the little loft above Eddie's garage when Richie would crack stupid jokes and practice his Voices as they poured together over the newest _Shazam!_ issue, talking big about far away cities and crazy dreams—to Bev and Stanley laughing like hyenas about Richie's slightly cringe-inducing stint on SNL from his late twenties the last time they'd all been together.

"It's okay if I come, right?" He remembers to add. "It's not a problem or anything?"

Richie gives him the dopiest grin over his phone. "Eddie, my darling, you are the only important person coming. I will fully put effort into this performance solely because you're in the audience."

"Shut up," he tells Richie, ignoring the way his face heats in pleasure at the words. "Of course, I'll come to your fucking show and support you, idiot."

The corner of Richie's mouth twitches into a smirk. "Aww, Eds, that may be the nicest borderline-mean thing anyone's ever said to me. Now let me give this corporate fucker a call and tell him to add a plus one to the guest list, and then we can figure out lunch? I'm assuming that's why you're loitering in the kitchen instead of busting your ass, like... I don't know, analyzing risks?"

"What do you even think I do?" Eddie laughs, and then concedes, “yeah, yeah, hurry up with your call. You know I can’t cook for shit.”

“Worst trophy wife ever,” Richie tells him loftily, and leaves to make his call.

Eddie finishes his coffee in the time it takes Richie to return, wearing a stupid smile that makes Richie doubletake and give him a jokey mock-suspicious glance while he rummages around the fridge for lunch.

"I'll text you the flight details when I get them," he says, and then raises an eyebrow in question. "What do you look so smug for, huh?"

"M'not," he immediately insists, and tries to put a scowl on his face instead, though it doesn't really work because Richie keeps making stupid faces at him and he keeps laughing as they banter over condiments and drinks.

By the time Eddie gets back to his desk the usual cacophony in his head has quieted to something manageable. Instead, there’s a sort of giddiness welling up inside him uncontrollably, like a second wind of energy, like the best fucking runner’s high, leaving him both calm and restless.

It’s Richie’s presence that gets him like this, so easily that it has him flushed for the rest of the afternoon, a kind of lingering sweetness so new to him that settles cloyingly, and with a mild surprise, in the midst of his first afternoon meeting, he realizes it’s contentment.

* * *

At the request of his therapist and the new slew of doctors he’d had to see for the whole huge nearly-fatal miraculous chest penetration scar thing, Eddie takes up running again.

To his pleasant surprise, no one is as outspokenly supportive about this fact as Bill and Richie. They’d known his affinity for running when he’d been young until his mother had pulled him out of gym, how he’d been the smallest but fastest in their class during the track units.

His body’s not as strong as it had been pre-impalement ( _impalement_ , Eddie thinks to himself sometimes in dull shock in the shower, one hand pressed to the rough scar tissue. _I was impaled_.), and while Richie had dragged him out of the way just enough for it to prove nonfatal, he’s going to have this ugly, knotted scar below his ribcage for the rest of his life.

He’s probably never going to have a mile time below seven minutes again, but Bill tells him with the patience of a saint over a grainy video call one morning when Eddie’s out of breath from his run and shoving a glass under the water dispenser in the fridge, “Eddie, none of us have had a s-seven minute mile since high school. Richie probably walked all of it, dude, don’t beat yourself up by having insane standards.”

“As much as it pains me to say it, Bill’s right,” Richie says, appearing from out of nowhere, sidling past Eddie to swing the opposite fridge door open, reaching for the carton of eggs on the top shelf. “Never run a mile in my life. Unless it was running away from the Bowers and Hockstetters of the world—then I’d fucking lap you.”

“When am I not right?” Bill asks jokingly, to which Richie replies by tipping his head into the frame to say dryly, “watch it, Big Bill. Can’t have the famous William Denbrough getting a big ego now, can we?”

“You’re telling _me_ about getting a getting a big head?” Bill asks, and throws Eddie an incredulous glance through the camera like, c _an you believe this guy?_ It’s a familiar routine, and it makes Eddie smile even now, watching the two banter.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Richie says automatically, a loose grin spreading over his mouth, “we all know I’ve got the biggest fattest h—”

“Beep beep,” Eddie cuts in quickly, yanking his phone out of reach. “Where’s Mikey?” he directs this question to Bill, ignoring Richie’s whining as he walks around the kitchen island and perches on a barstool. He downs the frosty glass of water in record time while Bill calls through the house for Mike.

They’d all been sorely in need of change after Derry 2.0, but even Eddie knows that none of them deserve it more than Mike, sweet, strong, reliable Mike who had quit his job at the library the very _day_ after they’d finally killed It.

Bill and Audra had offered, and so Mike, eager to see the word, had left Derry for the first time in twenty-seven years all the way to London. They’ve all received a deluge of pictures from them, of Bill’s tired eyes shining brightly, Mike’s gentle smile and Audra’s elegant one framing each side of his face in front of various European landmarks.

Richie sets down the carton by the stove, sneaks up behind him again when Mike comes in the frame. He rests his hands on the counter on either side of Eddie’s waist, effectively caging him against it, rests his chin on Eddie’s shoulder casually, and Eddie tries not to let his breath catch.

Richie’s arms are long, his forearms thick with ropy muscle, the veins standing out when he grips the edge of the counter, and Eddie realizes there’s too much saliva in his fucking mouth—god, what’s _wrong_ with him these days? He swallows hard and tries to focus on Bill and Mike telling a story about a bookstore they’d visited instead of the tendons of Richie’s arm shifting as he taps his long fingers idly on the counter, ever fidgety.

It takes an inordinate amount of effort not to think about how warm Richie feels pressed against him like this, to keep his breath even when Richie’s so close. He’s still hot from his run, and the proximity isn’t doing his tired lungs and shaky knees any good. Not to mention the way he’s all slick with sweat and Richie pressing against his back is sticking his shirt to his skin in a way his brain automatically processes as a confusing combination of gross and hot that leaves his mind buzzing with static.

He focuses on tracing idle patterns in the condensation left on his empty glass, little swirls and flowers as Mike and Richie chat about things to do in Amsterdam, the next scheduled city in the trio’s agenda.

"Well, Eddie and I," Richie's saying when he tunes back in fully, "are going to San Francisco this weekend for this show I'm doing, but I was thinking of doing something soon, when everyone's free. "

"With everyone?" Eddie asks, surprised by this quick development.

"Mhmm," Richie hums, and Eddie feels it rumble through him where they're connected, tries not to shiver as it wracks over his frame. "Housewarming for you slash six months since Mike's call. Since we all remembered."

"Six months," Bill sighs over the line. "And yet somehow it feels..."

"Like a lifetime," Eddie fills in for him. "A fucking eternity. Like this is the new normal, and everything else you've lived has been a weird fucking dream?"

"Yeah," Bill smiles humorlessly, "exactly like that."

"Watch out, Eds," Richie jokes, "Bill's _definitely_ stealing that for his next script."

"Would be an improvement," Eddie immediately fires back, then shoots an apologetic look at the screen and adds hastily, "sorry Bill!" when he makes an indignant noise in response.

"No, don't be sorry," Richie breathes low, too soft for the speaker to pick it up, his eyes bright when Eddie glances over, "You're brilliant."

Just like that, he's flushing warmly again, cheeks reddening from the praise. He ducks down and bites back the pleased smile that threatens to curl his lips.

"You guys just don't get Bill's work," Mike starts, because he's got it bad, the same way Eddie had consumed the entirety of the Richie Tozier Comedy Canon in less than a week once long ago, an odd hyper-fixation that had come and gone fairly quick when he'd been twenty-five or six, that had left him with odd vaguely sexy dreams for _months_ , an experience that he'd ultimately written off as odd but insignificant and thought less about as the years had dragged on until it made sense all at once.

"I don't think there's a person on this earth who really gets Bill's work besides you, Bill, and maybe Audra, like half the time," Richie says, to which a distant higher, feminine voice replies with something too muffled for them to make out.

"Audra said she doesn't get it either," Mike grins, and Bill sighs, rubbing his temple and trying his best to look disappointed even with a smile creeping up on his mouth.

"You guys are all insufferable," Bill says, and disappears from the screen.

Mike glances at him and then at Eddie and Richie, who mouths _drama queen_ very exaggeratedly until Eddie elbows him and sends Mike an apologetic look.

"Hey, don't say you guys when you really just mean Richie," Eddie complains to Bill, who appears behind Mike once again just to shrug childishly.

Then Mike’s got on his placating smile, pointing out through a knowing look, “Says the one living with him, Eddie.”

“Yeah, _Eddie_ ,” Richie says in mock outrage, and knocks his bicep in against Eddie’s shoulder. “You’ve got a fair bit of Insufferable in you, too.”

“You’re both very lovely,” Mike rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and continues quickly, diverting the conversation back on course. “So, this six-months-out thing? Have you talked to the others about it?”

“Considering that I literally thought of it when I saw Bill talking to Eddie this morning, no,” Richie admits breezily. He waves a flippant hand. “But who cares about the details, I’ll pass the idea along to Stanley and he’ll make a spreadsheet about it or something. CC us in the emails and all that.”

“Okay, well pass it along to Bevvie, too. You know she likes to plan these things,” Mike tells him.

“Yeah, I owe her a facetime,” Richie says thoughtfully, which Eddie kind of doubts because he’d watched Bev and Richie talk for _hours_ literally two days ago in the living room, during which Eddie had chimed in from time to time, but had mostly done work on his laptop and let the two chatter.

They’d always been like that together—a pair of troublemakers, mischievous as anything, with Bev’s flaming hair and Richie’s twinkling eyes. It had gotten Eddie incredibly fond, looking over his own spreadsheet (not that he’d admit it to Richie, or he’d laugh his ass off) and finding Richie smoking a cigarette and giggling with Bev over something, his long legs stretching across the sofa into Eddie’s space, his pale, bare feet pressed against Eddie’s thigh.

“Let us know how it goes,” Mike says, and Eddie mentally makes note of that. _Us_. Very interesting.

He cocks an eyebrow and makes a mental note to text Mike about it later, but says his goodbyes placidly.

“New rule,” he announces when they’ve hung up, dropping the phone at last, swinging around in the barstool and knocking Richie’s chin from his shoulder. “We need to talk about plans so that I can actually _plan_ around them. You can’t spring stuff like San Francisco and the six months thing on me without giving me a little more time to figure out how it’ll work.”

Richie looks properly chastised at that, and shifts his weight sheepishly from foot to foot. "You're right," he says, "I'm sorry, I'm just not used to—to planning around another person."

“That’s okay,” Eddie says easily, because he appreciates an apology that comes without hesitance. He’s well aware that Richie’s mind works fast—a little too fast for even the six of them, who understand him better than anyone, who’d functioned essentially as one seven-bodied being throughout their adolescence, all wrapped in each other in their protective obsessive way, to keep up. “Just remember next time.”

Richie sticks out a hand between them, curling his pinky towards Eddie. “Promise,” he says, and grins in a way that makes Eddie’s heart pang.

He curls his own pinky through Richie’s after a moment, hoping the red on his cheeks can be blamed on the heat.

“Thank god you didn’t make us do the spit handshake thing you were obsessed with,” Eddie says, dragging his hand back.

"Oh, you mean _this_?" Richie teases, which, _duh_ , he's Richie and Eddie should've known better than to remind him, and sticks out his wide palm, makes to spit in it when Eddie dances off the barstool and ducks out of reach with a cry of " _gross!_ "

"I need a shower," Eddie tells him then, because the coolness of the house is starting to make his sweat dry all chilly down his back.

"Hmm, I'll call Stan," Richie says idly, and takes Eddie's vacated seat. "See what he's up to and when he's free in the next couple months. He'll probably chew my ear off about doing things so last minute."

"Good," Eddie says primly, and heads for the stair grinning when Richie makes an indignant noise behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d been used to this, once. To proximity and sharing beds and tangling feet together because it didn’t matter, because it didn’t mean a thing when they’d been kids. He’d been able to link his arm through Beverly’s, or shove into Stan’s lap with no regard for personal space, never with the effortless ease that Richie commanded, but he had been comfortable with them nonetheless.
> 
> But twenty-seven long lonely years later, he looks at Richie next to him in the bed, warm and alive and startlingly just _here_ , existing right in Eddie’s space, and finds himself at a loss.

The days leading up to their trip leave Eddie with a sort of thrumming nervous energy that refuses to quiet no matter how much he tries.

He goes running often, even when it leaves him strung out and exhausted for the rest of the morning, his legs aching and lungs burning, but it’s a gratifying kind of tiredness. Richie’s usually awake by the time he returns, and they’re starting to form a routine of sorts. They’ll have breakfast together after Eddie’s workout, and then Eddie works until lunch, when they reconvene either to figure something out in the kitchen or Richie takes Eddie to some of his favorite spots around the city.

It’s a schedule he falls into without any trouble at all, his own timetable lining up with Richie’s well enough that it doesn’t cause much conflict.

The day of their flight yields no such success.

The flight details had been forwarded to him only the day prior, and though Eddie's made it his own little personal mission to get himself to loosen up more, the lack of time to prepare still has him apprehensive.

He overpacks, because he's Eddie and of course he does, filling his bags to the brim despite them only staying one night at the hotel. Richie stands in the doorway of the guestroom for a while watching him the evening before, mostly amused and not very helpful at all.

There’s a buzzing apprehension in him that morning, something that makes him clutch the honeyed black tea Richie pushes over to him close, his fingers knit tight around the ceramic of the mug until his palms tingle from the heat.

His work hours had shifted with the time difference, and he’d taken the afternoon off to make it to LAX in time. Still, he gets caught up in a particularly finnicky deliverable that doesn’t get done well past the time he’d planned to finish up for the day, and he has to scramble through his last-minute packing checklist.

He’s still wrangling all his toiletries when Richie raps noisily on the guestroom door and calls, “Are you taking the whole bathroom, dude? You know they have soap at the hotel, don’t you?”

Eddie strides to the door and throws it open, but doesn’t bother answering. He casts a scrutinizing look over at Richie’s long frame as he walks in and sits on the edge of Eddie’s bed. He’s dressed casually, in a pair of dark grey sweatpants and a sweater, feet slid into a pair of atrocious Adidas slides with fucking _socks_ that Eddie couldn’t get him to change out of if he tried.

Richie had started and finished packing that morning in a suspiciously short amount of time, largely owed, Eddie suspects, to the fact that he’d probably forget to bring anything of actual importance.

“Did you bring something to wear on stage?” Eddie asks him, to which he grimaces.

“You sound like my manager,” Richie complains, but dutifully adds, “Also, _yeah_ , I’ve kind of been doing this for years, or whatever. I’m wearing red.”

Eddie glances at the closet he’d spent the last weekend stocking. There’s a pair of red Italian leather shoes in there, outrageously expensive and gifted to him by Bev, that he’d only dared to wear twice.

It shouldn’t be difficult to ask, ‘ _hey, what if I matched my shoes to your shirt_ ’ or even just pack the shoes himself, but Eddie hesitates, dragging his tongue along the inside of his cheek contemplatively, a new habit he’d picked up from when the scar on his cheek had first healed and he’d been unused to the feeling inside his mouth.

“Go grab my shoes from the closet,” he tells Richie finally. When Richie raises an eyebrow, he adds with a sigh, “please?”

He goes, disappearing into the shallow walk-in, and calls, “Which pair? You’ve got like, a million pairs of the same boring office loafers. What the hell. Wait, these boots with the heels are kind of sexy, Eds, how come I never see you in these?”

“It’s literally always summer out here,” Eddie laments, carefully making sure he’d remembered to pack his shaving kit. “I miss having seasons. New York summers and winters are the fucking worst, but fall and spring. Give me some bona fide autumn weather and I’ll wear the boots all day.”

“Yeah?” Richie asks, and peers out of the closet. “You miss New York?”

“No,” Eddie tells him honestly, “oh god, _no_. But it would be nice to holiday there sometime. We can visit Bev and Ben.”

“A summer house,” Richie grins. “Or you know, a fall and spring apartment. Manhattan real estate, man.”

“Yeah, okay, mister Netflix check,” Eddie ribs, rolling his eyes and gesturing back to the closet. “The red shoes on the second rack.”

Richie lets out a low whistle that Eddie rolls his eyes at, returning from the closet with the shoes in hand. His cheeks are a little flushed when he places them carefully next to Eddie’s bag and straightens.

“Nice shoes,” Richie says a little shyly.

Just that shouldn’t be enough to have Eddie’s face warming, but it _does_ , and he kind of hates himself for it.

“Bev,” he says by way of explanation, and Richie nods knowingly.

Apparently, the audacity of matching shoes placates Richie into silence for the rest of the time Eddie packs, because he sits on Eddie’s bed dutifully on his best behavior, helping Eddie overpack while only making fun of him for it minimally.

And for a bit, everything’s fine. Eddie’s even beginning to calm the shrill voice inside him that sounds an awful lot like his mother that insists something _has_ to go wrong, and he’s doing a damn good job of shutting it up when they make it to their flight with time to spare and even manage to find Richie’s manager waiting for them at the airport in San Francisco without much hassle.

Eddie’s actually considering that things can actually go off without a hitch—something he’s never really believed before, because usually _he’s_ the one stressed and swamped with work and trying to plan things—when disaster strikes in the big shiny hotel lobby in San Francisco.

Richie looks down at the reservation and then at his manager, and raises his eyebrows. “Uhh,” he says. “This says one room.”

“Yeah? I booked separately down the hall,” Steve says, digging through his bag. “You know I hate being next door to you. Noise carries, you asshole.”

“No, not for you. For _Eddie_. The suite’s a one bedroom.” Richie says, and the sternness of his voice makes Steve look up.

It dawns on Eddie at the same moment, and before he can stop it, the thought’s in his head—sleeping in the same bed as Richie, tangled limbs and—and _body heat_.

Steve looks at Richie. And then he _gawks_ at Eddie, who shifts his weight uncomfortably under the scrutiny. “You wanted a… a separate room…for Eddie” he says slowly to Richie.

After a long moment, he gives Richie an apologetic grimace and shakes his head. “Shit, Rich, you need to learn how to tell me shit properly. You can’t just say “I have a plus one” and expect me to book separate rooms.”

“But why can’t they just give us another room?” Eddie cuts in quickly, face still too warm. The thought lingers in his mind like an overexposed image. He stubbornly banishes it to the depths of his psyche to analyze at a later time when he can have a breakdown undisturbed in the shower of his own room back in L.A.

“Not going to work,” Richie’s manager grimaces, looking genuinely apologetic, “They’re overbooked six ways from Sunday.”

“Cool,” Richie says, and pretends to shoot himself in the mouth. “As if I didn’t get elbowed and kneed by your skinny ass enough as a kid.”

For that, Eddie slams his elbow back and catches Richie in the ribs. As he doubles over and wheezes in pain, Eddie momentarily shelves his frantic panic and smiles as pleasantly as he can at Steve and says, “It’s fine, we can figure it out. I’ll just make him sleep in the bathtub or something.”

They’ve slept in the same bed before; the hammock, Richie’s childhood bed, those nights when Richie would sneak over and fold his lanky limbs through Eddie’s windowsill, and then leave before dawn. Sharing a bed is certainly not a big deal.

Or at least, it hadn’t been a big deal when they had been fourteen and used to the easy proximity. He rakes his eyes quickly over Richie’s long frame, his never-ending legs and the broadness of his shoulders, and imagines lying next to him.

Eddie can’t remember the last time he’d shared a bed with someone.

He and Myra had been married for nearly a decade, and for nearly all that time, they’d had an unspoken agreement of sorts. They’d never been physically intimate, because what they had needed from each other had been something else. Myra’s clingy overbearing nature and his anxiety had mixed to form a sort of codependency he’d been fed for so long it seemed he’d never _not_ had it. That’s where the line had been drawn, though. He had slept in his own bed after their first year or so of marriage, and very gladly at that.

Richie’s manager splits ways with them in front of the elevator to head towards his own room. As he follows Richie down the hall, Eddie notes nervously how far excessively apart each door seems to be.

Eddie fidgets with his empty coffee cup as he waits for Richie to swipe the door open. He’d meant to throw it out in the lobby, but with the whole room mix-up, he’d kept it clenched nervously between his fingers.

“Hey,” Richie says, nudging the door open, “you’re not pissed at me, are you? Because I know I should’ve told Steve ‘ _oh, it’s my childhood friend, not some little blonde thing I picked up at a bar’_.”

Eddie steps past the threshold and forgets to answer him.

“ _This_ is the room you’re worried about being too small?” Eddie asks, dazed, “Rich, take it to heart when I tell you that you’re irredeemably wealthy. You’ll never be a normal person again.”

“Says the guy shaking like a chihuahua from one latte.” Richie mutters, and follows him in.

The suite his manager has booked for him is sprawling and beautiful, but like they’d been warned, there is only one wide luxurious bed in the singular bedroom. Richie’s luggage is sparse next to Eddie’s, though he’d promised the red shirt he’d folded into his single bag had been thankfully clean and unwrinkled.

Richie glances over everything in a perfunctory manner before he kicks off his shoes and makes for the sofa in the sitting room where his manager has left a manila folder for him. Eddie takes much longer taking in the private terrace the French doors by the sitting room leads to, the gleaming freestanding bathtub in the bathroom, and finally winds up in front of the minibar, unsure how to proceed.

“Help yourself,” Richie says without looking up, “Although, Eds, you’re kind of cracking out from the coffee already.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says very eloquently. He decides against the drink because he _does_ still feel rather flushed from the caffeine—although, to be fair, it could be the fact that they’re in such close quarters with one bed and Eddie hasn’t come to terms with that yet.

They’ve got a good hour to themselves, and while Richie lounges around and peruses the file, Eddie showers until he doesn’t feel filthy from the airport anymore. The marble white bathtub beckons temptingly, and he sighs longingly, wondering if they’ll get back in time for him to have a soak before they go to bed.

He’s never taken as many baths in his adult life as after getting his bandages off and his stitches out. There’s always some part of him that feels strung out or stiff, that could benefit from the way a steaming aromatic bath always leaves him loose and relaxed.

Richie’s still reading through his routine when Eddie gets out of the shower, hair damp and skin flushed, wrapped in the fluffy white hotel robe. He does a halfhearted towel-dry, and pretends he doesn’t see Richie watching him as he opens up the balcony doors, letting in the breezy comfortable night air. His hair’s going to curl from the humidity, and though it’s nowhere near as monstrous as Richie’s wild curls, Eddie remembers one summer in Derry when he’d let it grow out longer, all wavy and thick, and how much he’d secretly liked the way it made his eyes look huge and striking on his face.

After a thorough examination of the sitting area outside, the large open umbrella shading it even darker under the cover of night, as well as a light right outside that Eddie finds and flicks on, bathing the whole terrace in dim yellow lights, he lets himself take in the sprawling iconic bay before him, the bridge silhouetted against glimmering lights. And only when he’s memorized the sight, reveling in the feeling in his chest, light and fluttery as a bird, he turns back and strolls over to Richie.

“I knew you didn’t write your own jokes,” Eddie comments, peering over Richie’s shoulder onto the page he’s currently looking at, “I’d know your fucking trashmouth anywhere, and you don’t sound anywhere _near_ as sloppy as your shows were.”

“You’ve seen my shows?” Richie asks, tilting his head back a little to glance up at Eddie through his eyelashes. God, Richie’s always had such long eyelashes, dark against the stormy grey of his eyes.

Eddie blinks. “Sure,” he says, and steps backwards from the couch, away from Richie. “I looked you up before we all met up in Derry.”

Richie hums, but then goes quiet, so Eddie leaves him to his manila folder to get dressed.

When he’d gotten the call from Mike and then done a number on his poor car, the memories had begun trickling back in as if the force of the impact had unstopped whatever kept his thoughts of Derry from him.

The first of them he’d remembered after Mike had been Richie, because Richie Tozier had made it the sole mission of his adolescent life to invade every single one of Eddie’s thoughts, whether it be because of annoyance or fondness.

Of course, Richie had come first, with the feeling of sun-warmed skin on skin, with the burning heat of a blush on his cheeks when Richie’s jokes became particularly ribald and coarse, with the way his long, pale fingers had looked wrapped around Eddie’s, hindered by his cast, so careful with Eddie’s smaller hand not to jostle the fracture in his arm.

He glances through the doorway of the bedroom to where Richie sits facing away from him and wishes, foolishly, for just one indulgent minute, that Richie would face him so he can see how those skinny fingers have grown, to examine the neat, long masculine fingers of forty-year-old Richie like he could that of fourteen-year-old Richie.

He tamps down the urge and reaches into his bag to pull out the outfit he’d carefully pressed into it earlier.

“You know,” Richie calls, not once turning around, “I’m trying.”

“To?”

“Write again. After I got back from Derry, I had a meeting with the execs and they thought it was a good idea because of the whole coming out thing. There’s a market for me rebranding, apparently.”

“Oh,” Eddie murmurs. “Are you nervous?”

Richie finally looks at him over his shoulder with huge sincere eyes. “Dude, I’m terrified.” He follows up with a small smile, genuine this time, not jokey in the least. “Going from a boozy straight-dude comedian who hasn’t written an original line in a decade to being—I don’t know, whatever the hell I am now? Slightly less boozy and out of the closet, at least.”

“Rich,” he says softly. He grips the edge of the suitcase so hard the zipper’s teeth bite into his palms. “I’m proud of you.”

It doesn’t convey the complicated mess of feelings inside him at all, and Eddie desperately wishes he knew how to put it eloquently.

But Richie’s eyes soften with understanding, and Eddie gets that distinct feeling of solidarity; this is the one secret they’d kept for just themselves, the one thing they’d never had to hide from each other.

But somehow, the unspoken acceptance had shifted like everything else in their strange little lives and Eddie finds himself struggling for words he can't seem to find. He's never been good at this like Mike or Ben—talking about his emotions feels more like spilling his fucking guts right there for everyone to see, and the thought of _that_ , of being known to a greater degree of vulnerability and having all his broken, enshrouded parts out in the open for Richie to see, is so horrifying that it makes Eddie want to hide under the goddamn bed like he’d do when he had been very small.

There had been a particular bad Nor'easter in the early winter of '91 that Eddie remembers with astounding clarity. He'd tucked himself between the carpet and the bedframe as the house had rattled from wind and sheets of rain pounding against the roof and siding, fifteen and still too skinny around the hips and spooked much too easily after the clown-related events of the recent years, his heart thunderous in his chest.

His mother had passed out hours before in the living room, and there had been something in Eddie that felt inherently unsafe that night with the storm howling outside his window, knees like jelly when he dragged himself to the phone and dialed Richie's home number with hesitant fingers.

Thinking back on it, Eddie feels almost foolish over making such a big deal over a simple storm, but his usual silly coping mechanism for whenever he’d get spooked since his father’d passed—hiding under the bed— hadn’t worked for whatever reason that night.

Richie had driven over through it with only a learner’s permit, Eddie remembers, though he doesn't recall exactly what he'd said during the call to convince him to do such a crazy thing. In those days, it hadn't exactly taken a lot of persuasion to get Richie to do seemingly unhinged things. About fifteen minutes later, Eddie had nearly started crying in relief when there was a sharp rapping at the window and he'd lifted the curtain aside to find Richie's pallid drenched face through the window, his curls matted down from the rain and his meager windbreaker whipping about him because he hadn't even bothered zipping it up.

Another unspoken thing amongst hundreds, Eddie had lent Richie a dry sweater, and though the sleeves had stopped short of Richie's wrists and the hem sat a good half inch above the waistband of his boxers, Richie hadn't complained. He'd closed the curtains and sunk onto the perfectly made bed without a question, even when Eddie had to stoop down to pick up the sweater he'd been clutching onto earlier in the night, borrowed from Stanley and stolen over the years, left partly under the bed when he'd stumbled to the phone.

He remembers Richie playing an old mix from the previous summer on his Walkman, one headphone stuck in Eddie's ear, the other looped around Richie's, lying flat on the bed only inches apart but untouching.

He'd been as desperate to say something then as he is now, grasping at straws to somehow let Richie know that this _means_ something to him, how he'd accommodated so easily around Eddie simply because he _liked_ to. Because he'd wanted to. How he still wants to, if the way he's still watching Eddie is anything to go by, all dark tender eyes behind the lenses of his glasses.

There had never been any shame between them, not when it came to the way they saw each other. It had been like respite, in a town like Derry and under the thumb of his grossly homophobic mother who’d done her best and still ultimately failed to instill her values into him. It had been the two of them against the world, on nights like that.

This isn’t their secret anymore, he realizes abruptly. This isn’t a _secret_ anymore, period. A vague, conditioned sort of dread starts to well within him, the kind that he actively has to push to the back of his head to chase it away.

There is relief there too, like warmth blooming in his chest when he’d first told Beverly back in New York that he was going to move in with Richie and she’d given him a tight hug and told him she loved him. Perhaps the Losers had always known, really, because it was like the seven of them had been one, once upon a time.

After Bev, he’d been the recipient of Stan’s gentle smile and Ben’s loving congratulations, Mike’s safe arms and Bill’s knowing eyes, and for the first time in years, something had calmed inside him. He can still be the person he wanted to be.

Richie looks like he’s gearing up to speak when there’s a sharp rap at the door that catches them both off guard.

“Rich,” Steve’s voice calls through the door, “Hurry up, man. We’ve got like, twenty minutes to get you dressed and to the car.”

“Shit,” Richie mutters loud enough only for Eddie to hear, before he raises his voice and says back, “Yeah, okay, hang on. We’ll meet you in the lobby?”

Steve says something too muffled for Eddie to understand, but Richie just says, “Okay, cool!” back, so he assumes it’s an affirmation.

Eddie grabs for his phone. “Oh, Christ, how has it been half an hour? Isn’t your show supposed to be at nine?” he demands, blinking down at the screen, which reads a cool and breezy half past seven.

“Mic check, rehearsal, making sure I’m not falling on my ass drunk,” Richie explains with a carefree wave of the hand, “it’s all a very long and arduous process, you know how it is.”

“No,” Eddie says, bemused. “I don’t. But I _do_ know that you’ve got to get dressed right now unless you want to go on looking like a fucking slob, and that you’re not going to have time to shower before we—why are you look at me like that?”

Richie’s grinning like he can’t help himself.

“I missed you bossing me around,” he says, not sounding like he’s joking in the least. In fact, he looks rather earnest, his eyes all bright and sweet.

Eddie opens his mouth. Closes it again. Feels his fucking face go red for what must be the hundredth time that week.

“Shut up,” he replies immediately, though he can’t hide how pleased he sounds. “Go get dressed.”

* * *

Unfortunately, Eddie doesn’t get a chance to boss Richie around again for a bit. When they get to the club, Richie gets ushered away, and Eddie’s left to wait impatiently, watching as Richie’s attention is drawn every which way right up until the show.

Eddie watches from the audience, because Richie had insisted he wouldn’t get the full effect from backstage, and Richie—Richie’s _good_ tonight, not stumbling drunkenly over his words and forgetting punchlines.

He starts off a little stiff, Eddie can tell from the tension in his shoulders, but as the set goes on, he loosens up and has fun with it, and Eddie marvels for a second over how genuinely _likable_ Richie is to the public—no wonder he hit it big in the first place. The Richie Tozier brand of charisma has always been a puzzlingly interesting thing, but it’s one Eddie understands the appeal of well.

After the set, Eddie’s left oddly conflicted over the matter that it’s Richie who all these people adore. And, a little bit deeper, if he’s being honest, a small flame of possessiveness. He’s still their Richie— _his_ Richie, sweet and stubborn and clever, with a penchant for running his mouth and a protective streak a mile wide. Those are the sides of Richie that Eddie gets to keep for himself, that he’s only shown the Losers without any guardedness, and it feels so strange to see Richie on stage with a certain degree of openness he’s never had in front of other’s prying eyes.

It’s almost a relief when he can finally get backstage again.

“Eddie!” Richie calls over the head of a small woman with a headset who is attempting to blot his face, and waves him over. Eddie is out of his element in the throng of people rushing every which way, so he smiles a little dazedly at Richie as he walks over.

Thankfully, the crowd around Richie parts to let him through. Eddie sidles up to him, and it’s a little bit _weird_ , to talk to Richie the way he always does in front of all these strangers. “Nice set, Trashmouth,” he says as Richie’s smile grows, “Although, I didn’t think you’d be able to go twenty minutes without talking about fucking someone’s mom.”

“S’just your mom, Eds,” Richie good naturedly signs an intern’s phone case and finally turns to Eddie, waving off the rest of the people still standing around him. He swings his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and steers him further backstage, ducking down close to say into his ear, “It’s the Kaspbrak blood; it runs hot, young Edward.”

Eddie knows that all too well.

He tries not to think about how comfortable he feels tucked into the crook of Richie’s arm and points threateningly up at him. “Don’t fucking call me Edward,” he grumbles, but allows Richie to drag him back towards where Steve is waiting with the owner of the club.

The owner shakes their hands and demands Richie’s time, swearing he has to introduce him to some old friends before ushering him off, and Richie throws a helplessly apologetic glance behind him as he’s practically shepherded away, the crease between his eyebrows only straightening when Eddie waves a nonchalant hand and says he’ll wait with Steve until he’s done.

Fortunately, Steve is more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, so he hangs back away from the busy employees of the club and Eddie’s glad to be with him.

“So,” Steve says conversationally, leaning back against the wall, “Richie’s childhood friend, right? He doesn’t really talk much about when he used to live out East. Most of us assumed he was from L.A.”

“Yeah, well growing up in the middle of nowhere, Maine isn’t exactly as glamorous as being from California,” Eddie snorts, “Especially when you’re the town Trashmouth like Richie was.”

“Trashmouth,” Steve chuckles, “So that’s where he got it from.”

Eddie hums in agreement and replies, “We kind of drifted as we grew up. But Richie has always been so…”

“Richie.” Steve fills in with the faintest trace of amusement. “Yes, I’m well aware.”

“Richie,” Eddie agrees, because there really is no other way to sum it up. “We didn’t really reconnect until a couple months ago.”

“When Rich had his little crisis and went AWOL for two weeks,” Steve fills in.

Eddie tips his head in acknowledgement. Out of all of them, Richie had stayed in Derry the longest in the aftermath of defeating It in the tunnels. First because Eddie had been in the hospital, and even when they’d cleared him to return to New York and he had offered to stay, however reluctantly, because _fuck_ , he hates that town, Richie had insisted he’d wanted a couple days to himself.

Which is fair. Discovering a whole heavy-security vault of childhood trauma in your own mind takes a lot out of a guy.

Eddie himself had been reeling when he’d gotten back to New York, body bruised and broken, seeing everything with fresh eyes like a sleepwalker awoken. The aftermath of those two and a half short weeks had changed the course of Eddie’s life irrevocably.

He’d started negotiations for his divorce from his hospital bed while Bev and Stanley found him a place to stay; the cozy two-bedroom apartment in the city he’d called his own for the couple months in between Derry and L.A, giving him his own space for the first time in his life. Giving him space to breathe, albeit the majority of those months had been spent recovering from his injuries.

There had been a lot of introspection in those months, a lot of relearning himself and discovering new things he’d missed altogether. He’d missed Richie like a goddamn _ache_ , like the actual crater in his ruined fucking chest, as if Richie had taken some physical piece of him to L.A and he’d never be whole again. Though, ultimately, as Bev had reminded him on one of their nights in, because she’d set a month limit for herself and Ben as well, and because she and Eddie had taken to spending the weekends together since they were both in the city, that it was for the best.

To _get their shit together_ , as Bev had so eloquently put it.

Surely, it must be the same for Richie, then. Eddie doesn't know much about Richie's life up until now—they'd missed _so much_ space in the middle, two whole decades worth—but from the state of Richie's home, the plentiful drinking habits, the way he makes something in Eddie's heart pang with a longing so sweet that he begins to crave it, just makes him think that maybe Richie is just as changed as he is.

He makes small talk with Steve until Richie comes back with a considerably larger crowd than he'd left with. It's a relief when Richie makes a beeline for him, jostling Steve out of the way so he can press up against Eddie's side.

"Eddie!" he says with a grin, dramatically drawing Eddie to him, "Edward, how I longed for you in the time we were apart."

"Call me Edward one more time, Richard," Eddie says dryly, "Oh wait, remember what your grandma used to call you?"

Richie goes pale. "Fuck you," he says, as Eddie leans into his side and croons sweetly, "Nana Tozier's favorite grandchild was always her little _Dickie_ , wasn't it?"

"Not so little," Richie replies immediately, like it's an impulse, and a little flutter of laughter radiates through the crowd. Richie’s brow twitches in annoyance at their audience, but Eddie thinks he may be the only one who notices. "But here’s the deal, Spaghetti. We have to show up to some event to this bar, get a drink or two, and I have to make nice with some douchebags for a bit. Is that cool?”

Eddie chews his lip thoughtfully. He’s still a little stiff from the flight and he _had_ been hoping for the bath.

Although, Eddie relents in his mind, he’s been trying to get out of his comfort zone more lately, and a bar’s a familiar enough sight that it’s not like Richie will leave him hanging in the middle of an unknown place if he has to go off with someone again. Richie looks at him expectantly, and Eddie realizes that he's the one making the decision.

"Sure," he says after a second, "yeah, that sounds fun."

Richie immediately begins introducing him to the small troupe of people he's got at his heels, and Eddie smiles and greets as many of them as possible while retaining exactly no information about any of them.

"Irrelevant," Richie laughs to him later in the back of the massive car Steve sweeps them into, when Eddie asks how he knows all these people, "they're all irrelevant. Which was fucking news to me, a couple months ago."

"Oh," Eddie replies quietly, because he understands exactly what Richie means. The people in his life that mattered had been lost to him long ago, and he hadn't even known it. Remembering the Losers had been like waking from a long sleep, wiping the haze from his eyes and seeing the world anew. The axis of his world had shifted, not to somewhere new but _back_ , to the place where it had always belonged.

He'd just forgotten that, for a while.

He leans into the middle seat, into Richie's side as inconspicuously as he can and leeches off the warmth there. He smells like smoke and cologne, and Eddie wonders suddenly if he's ever smelled another man in such close proximity before. He doesn't think so. Not even his father, who died when he’d been five and he can't remember, nor his acquaintances from college, his roommates with whom he'd always maintained a respectful distance.

Richie is the first. Richie might have _been_ the first, all those years ago in a sunny spot in their hammock, inhaling against the wild halo of Richie’s hair and feeling the still-growing delicate bird-bones of his chest as they wrestled playfully with each other.

The thought makes him shiver, and Richie gives him a very strange look.

"Sorry," he mumbles, turning back to the window. Maybe he's just a huge pervert.

“Are you, uh—are you cold?” Richie asks, kind-of-but-not-really hiding a smile. And Eddie—Eddie feels just like a depraved 40-year-old virgin who thought he’d never be attracted to _anyone_ , who thought that he had made peace with that years ago when he’d married Myra.

And now he’s sitting here next to Richie thinking about the way his ribs had felt under Eddie’s hungry, searching hands in the ghost of a memory.

Eddie shakes his head mutely. The opposite of cold, really. He hopes the flush warming his cheeks isn’t visible in the dark car, but something about the way Richie’s mouth twitches into an approximation of a smirk tells him that he’s being obvious.

For the rest of the ride, he keeps his hands stubbornly folded in his lap and stays pressed against the window, as far on his side of the seat as he can manage.

* * *

The bar is chaotic.

Eddie doesn’t know what he’d expected, but it certainly isn’t a high rise in downtown San Francisco, sleek and ridiculously tall and oddly reminiscent of New York.

It certainly isn’t the kind of bar he’d think Richie would frequent if given the choice, just a little too hipster and upscale. Every time they’ve gone drinking in any combination of their group, they’ve chosen rather lowkey dive-bars and cute little pubs, and this sleek airbrushed monstrosity is all overpriced drinks with ridiculous names.

Richie drags him along into the center of the crowd, though he doesn’t spare a single glance at the near-dozen people vying for his attention, one hand pressed very lightly against the small of Eddie’s back over his sweater.

“Drink?” Richie offers, and leads them to the bar. He slides into a seat and gestures for Eddie to do the same.

Richie gets a Macallan neat because he’s a showoff, and Eddie rolls his eyes, orders a margarita for himself because whiskey tastes like shit. He tells Richie as much over the salted rim of his drink, and he throws his head back and laughs, a full-bodied thing that makes Eddie more flustered than he’d like to admit.

Eddie’s been out for drinks and dinner with his colleagues on a couple occasions, though they’d been few and far between when he’d been married to Myra; she didn’t like him staying out too late downtown and never had much nice to say about his coworkers anyways, but Eddie had come out of it thankfully socially competent enough not to make a fool of himself in a room full of starchy suits.

Richie either doesn’t have the same deeply-ingrained need to be civil, or he doesn’t give a shit.

One whiskey becomes two, and then a beer that Richie downs like its water. Eddie sips at his single margarita slowly, then orders another. People swarm to Richie like ants to sugar water, slick and cool and experienced in the industry, or fumbling and pallid and asking for autographs.

He watches Richie play nice for a bit, taking pictures and cracking a couple jokes while the owner thanks him again for stopping by, but by the time he’s on his second beer, Richie’s composure starts to crack.

It’s almost interesting to watch. He’s seen Richie-as-an-adult aggravated and afraid, back in the hospital, had even seen him weeping, though those memories of the dark and damp and rot of the sewers had gotten fuzzy sometime after It had torn a big, gaping hole in Eddie’s chest. There’s much of the younger Richie that bleeds through, but _this_. Getting to learn these new mannerisms, retuning himself to the person Richie’s become sends a tiny shivery thrill through him.

There’s a twitch in his jaw that Eddie’s learning to read as annoyance, a tightness in his shoulders when he gives the poor couple accosting him a picture and sends them on their way without his autograph.

“Jesus,” Richie huffs, finally turning back to Eddie, whose second drink finally runs dry. He’s a little flushed from the alcohol and attention, watching Eddie with a healthy dose of embarrassment reddening his ears. “It’s not usually this chaotic.”

“Rich, we’re in San Francisco and you just had your first show since coming out and fucking killed it,” Eddie reminds him. “ _And_ it was sans all the stupid straight guy shit, at that. What did you expect?”

“You think I killed it?” Richie arches a dark eyebrow. “Because I literally have not shaken like that before going on stage in like, _years_. Here, feel. I think I’m still quaking.”

They’d already been sitting close, shoulders brushing occasionally, but when Richie reaches out a hand in offer, Eddie realizes they’ve been moving closer between bouts of cringy photos, that Richie’s pressed against him from shoulder to elbow. That he doesn’t mind it in the slightest.

And that _must_ be the alcohol, because Eddie doesn’t hesitate to slip his fingers over Richie’s wide palm, cradling his hand.

He’s not shaking anymore, but it takes Eddie an inordinate amount of effort not to dwell on the heat of his palm, on how the grooves feel under his fingers.

He looks up through his lashes and finds Richie watching him mutely. Solemnly, despite his inebriated state.

“You’re good,” Eddie whispers, and watches Richie’s eyes darken just a little.

But this isn’t the place. He clears his throat quickly. “You were good on stage,” he adds hastily, pulls his hand back, and reaches for the nearest drink—Richie’s third beer, barely touched, and downs it. “Congrats, Rich. You’ve finally managed to convince all these people that you’re funny. I don’t know how you did it.”

Richie just gives him a lopsided smile. “Well, there was this weird little kid from a couple streets over who’d let me practice jokes on him all the time, no matter how shit he’d tell me they were. You could say my ego started there.”

“Oh? I’ll make sure to tell Stan he’s the one responsible for your ego. He’ll definitely want to take you down a couple pegs.”

Richie snorts, and takes the empty glass from Eddie’s hand. “You’ve had enough to drink if you think Stan’s responsible for anything but keeping me humble.”

“Hey man,” Eddie frowns, stretching for the glass as Richie holds it out of reach with his ridiculously long arms. “You’re the one on your fifth drink. You’re just mad because Stan’s weird niche humor steals your thunder.”

With a bark of laughter, Richie relinquishes the glass to him. “And that’s why it gives me a little humility, dude. Do you know how hard it is to be the funny one when _Stan’s_ funnier than you?”

Graciously, Eddie lets Richie in on a little secret. “Stan’s not funnier than you.”

“You think?”

Eddie really doesn’t know why he sounds so surprised. “Richie, you wouldn’t be “the funny one” if you weren’t funny, you idiot.”

“Whoa, careful there, Eds. Someone might overhear and think you were actually admitting that you think I’m funny. You’d never hear the end of it, you know.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Oh, believe me, I know,” he says, and jostles Richie with his shoulder. “But what am I going to do? Take it back?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Richie tells him, smirking. “It’s already ingrained into my brain. It’s never going away, Eds—you think I’m fucking hilarious. You’re a _fan_ of ol’ Trashmouth Tozier, you little nerd.”

And the thing is, Richie’s kind of _right_. Richie’s stage presence and charisma when he’s comfortable are off the charts. He’s kind of dazzling to watch when he’s in command of himself, with his expressive, animated way of telling a story. The way he can’t fucking sit still for even one moment; Richie fidgets with his hands often, even now, tapping at the bar with his elegant fingers, bouncing his leg idly where it rests against the rung in his barstool, and Eddie even likes _that_.

The song changes to something bass-heavy and deep, then. Eddie’s remotely aware that they’re not even drinking anymore, that Richie’s leaning in close, their thighs and arms pressed together. He meets Richie’s dark, hungry eyes, and the defense he’d been building—an indignant denial—crumbles just like that.

His head’s buzzing a little from the drinks, and Richie feels so warm against him. This is what he’d wanted in the car, he realizes with a start. To be close.

And that realization is what makes him soften instead of bristle. Eddie watches Richie’s eyes reflect the lurid lights, and he says very quietly, “Richie, you know that I…”

“You?” Richie prompts, hanging onto every word.

Eddie tangles his fingers together in his lap and says a little bashfully, “You know I’ve always thought that.”

Richie smiles fondly. “Yeah, Eds,” he says, “But if you want, I can definitely pretend to erase that from my memory so you can keep telling me to shut up.”

“Please,” Eddie requests, though it’s with a small smile of his own. “I’ll even get the next round if you never bring it up again.”

“The Risk Analyzing big bucks come out at last,” Richie jibes, “Is this what you look like when you go out drinking with your coworkers?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he signals the bartender for two more beers. “No, my shoes are _never_ this cool when I go out with them.”

Richie ducks halfway under the bar, taking another look at Eddie’s neatly crossed ankles as the bartender slides their drinks to them. “Cute,” he says, and promptly finishes half his drink with an impressive two gulps. “Real ‘I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore’”

“Thank you,” Eddie tells him, sitting up a little straighter. Richie’s own bright red shirt looks vibrant against his pale complexion, making the darkness of his hair and eyes stand out starkly. “You look nice in red,” he blurts out, and takes a drink to avoid having to look at Richie as his cheeks warm.

“Oh?” Richie says in slight surprise, looking down at the shirt he’s got unbuttoned just a little too far down his chest. Eddie’s been staring at the dark, curly layer of hair on his chest that peeks through the buttons he’d left undone on and off all evening. “You think?”

“ _Yeah_ , dude,” Eddie says emphatically. “Have you seen yourself? You’re always calling Ben hot, and don’t get me wrong, he is. But _you’re_ hot too, Rich. I could look at you forever and not get bored.”

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie admonishes, only sounding half-joking, though the way his cheeks flush softly give away how pleased he really is. “Don’t tarnish Haystack’s reputation like that.”

“I said you’re both good! I’m not tarnishing it in the least.” Eddie finishes his drink and sets down the glass. He frowns up at Richie. “Why aren’t I allowed to think you’re hot, huh? Why are you gatekeeping?”

Richie gives him a careful look. “Eds… are you _drunk_?”

“Buzzed,” Eddie compromises, and watches Richie slide his empty glass out of reach. “Hey, now you’re cutting me off? Tyranny, Rich. It’s fucking tyranny.”

“Alright, Dorothy,” Richie grins, “maybe it’s time to click your cute little heels together so we can go home.”

Eddie squints. “Does that make you the dog?”

“Woof,” Richie immediately responds, and stands up, starts to gather his belongings. “C’mon, I’ll get an Uber. You wanna get out of here?”

Eddie knocks his heels together twice before hopping down from the barstool, a little unsteady on his feet. “Yes please.”

* * *

Back at the hotel, Eddie gets ready for bed first while Richie has another drink at the minibar, and then Richie heads for the shower.

And here it is before him. The bed.

Eddie hesitates in front of it, dressed in shorts and an old shirt. It’s an unassuming fluffy thing, piled with pillows and wide enough that he really has nothing to be nervous about. He could sleep on one end and do his best not to brush up against Richie and trigger the instant deluge of horny thoughts.

They’ve been touchy all night. Eddie’s sure that subtle had been the last thing either of them had been at the bar, handsy and building anticipation to—to _this_.

Richie stumbles into the room dressed down in boxers and a loose worn old shirt sometime after he convinces himself to get in the bed, and Eddie stays silent, watching him place his glasses on the nightstand before he slides under the heavy covers.

He’d been used to this, once. To proximity and sharing beds and tangling feet together because it didn’t matter, because it didn’t mean a thing when they’d been kids. He’d been able to link his arm through Beverly’s, or shove into Stan’s lap with no regard for personal space, never with the effortless ease that Richie commanded, but he had been comfortable with them nonetheless.

But twenty-seven long lonely years later, he looks at Richie next to him in the bed, warm and alive and startlingly just _here_ , existing right in Eddie’s space, and finds himself at a loss.

Richie smells clean, like soap and hotel shampoo, and Eddie relishes in that for a moment—just being close enough to him to let the scent wash over him. The scent of detergent and soap is comforting, like it always has been, and it calms Eddie enough for him to get his voice back.

“Light,” Eddie says, throat too dry. He swallows, and it hurts.

Richie blinks like he’s just realized Eddie is still awake, and Eddie realizes he’s drunker than he’d thought. He starts to sit up but thinks better of it and flops back down and huffs, “getting up is making me too dizzy, fuck the lights.”

Richie being insufferable actually puts Eddie more at ease. He knows how to handle Richie being annoying much better than he knows how to handle Richie being—being whatever he’d been at the bar, with his loose grin and searing hands.

If Eddie thinks about it hard enough, he can still feel the heat of Richie’s palms on his hips guiding him carefully through the crowd of people on their way out, cradling Eddie’s narrow waist between his fingers.

He gets up with a heavy, burdened sigh and reaches over Richie to hit the light switch himself. His forearm glides against Richie’s soft cotton shirt when he turns off the lamp and the darkness rushes in around them, blinding Eddie with its suddenness, and he makes a quiet startled noise, embarrassing and high with surprise. Richie reacts to it automatically, reaching for him.

For a moment, he’s untethered in the vast darkness that sweeps him up into its embrace, rooted only by the scalding grip of Richie’s hand on his wrist. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

He can’t help the shuddering exhale that tumbles from his mouth, but that breaks the tension. Richie’s long fingers unfurl quick, and he yanks his hand back to his chest.

Eddie’s wrist burns where they’d been touching, skin on skin. He wonders if the pads of Richie’s fingers are the same, coming alive with sparks wherever he’d been holding Eddie tight.

Richie mutters an apology, and as Eddie’s eyes adjust to the lack of light, he discovers that Richie looks oddly unhappy, his dejected gaze somewhere near Eddie’s shoulder rather than his face.

“It’s fine,” Eddie says quickly. It does nothing to fix the expression on Richie’s face, much to his chagrin. Eddie wonders suddenly if he’s done something wrong. If he’d been a little too drunk, too dumb at the bar.

He lets the words dissolve between them until the only thing left is a ringing silence that permeates the air between them. He thinks this must be what it feels like to go crazy.

When Eddie lays back down, it’s facing the wall instead of Richie, a little bit annoyed at how easily Richie has him feeling unhinged. He chews his lip in contemplation, and then after a moment, he says softly at the wall, “Go to sleep, Rich. I can practically fucking hear you thinking up a storm right now, and I know for a fact it’s all inane shit.”

Eddie waits ten minutes, and then ten minutes more, and he knows from Richie’s breathing that he’s still awake. Eddie’s whole body tenses with a ripe sort of anticipation.

"Eddie?" Richie says softly.

Eddie's restless, unnerved by both Richie's closeness and his very existence _._ "What?" he asks carefully, twisting his fingers into the sheets.

For a long moment, the silence settles between them. Then Richie breaks it, the words heavy. “Are you unhappy?”

“No,” Eddie says automatically.

“No,” he repeats, turning over to face Richie, because he really isn’t. Not when Richie is radiating warmth across the bed from him, so similarly to how he’d sneak into Eddie’s room sometimes as a teen, his lanky, awkward limbs climbing up the lattice up the side of the house while Eddie’s mom dozed downstairs in front of the TV, completely unaware.

In the months following their first encounter with It, Richie’s ever-present insomnia had only gotten worse, and in the dark stillness of the early hours before dawn, it hadn’t been uncommon for Eddie to be awoken by the sharp rap of Richie’s knuckles against his window. He’d stumbled across his room those nights when Richie’s mind had run too fast for sleep to wrap him up in its grasp, yanking the frame up for Richie to slip through, ungainly and uncoordinated.

Eddie would doze for the rest of the night, drowsy from the heat of Richie’s body and from his interrupted rest, while Richie would talk in low rasp about anything and everything until the words began to run together and slur as his mind gradually quieted, made calm by Eddie’s presence.

So much of his life had been unhappiness, but this much he’s sure of—he hadn’t been unhappy then, and he most certainly is not now. Those intimate, private moments they’d spent together on the cusp of adolescence had been formative for him. Perhaps being with the Losers had been the only moments he _hadn’t_ been unhappy.

And then Richie says something that surprises him. “But are you happy?”

There is no immediate answer for this one. Eddie reels at the four simple words and wills with all of his being for an answer to manifest, but nothing springs forward.

He hasn’t considered what being happy entails for years. He’d made his peace with being unhappy so long ago that even the act of being merely content feels like overwhelming joy that makes his blood sing. He’d been content back then, with Richie’s gravelly tired voice in his ears, a soothing familiar thing, his chatter filling Eddie’s head and numbing the daily anxieties that swirled insistently around his mind.

He is content now, free of Myra’s oppressive grasp on his life like a vice around his ribcage, closing up his airways until he hadn’t been able to breathe a single free breath without her sharp eyes watching his every move, so similar to the blue, beady stare of his mother.

Is he happy? Is happiness even in the cards for him? Like sex and so many other things Eddie had never once associated with himself and had pushed to the back of his mind, written off as whims that were simply not meant for him. It had been easy then, to decide that for himself. _You don’t want sex. You will never be happy_. They hadn’t been lies at the time, exactly. More like half-truths. Of course, he hadn’t wanted those things with Myra.

Richie turns those things on their face so effortlessly. He brings out a side of Eddie that he’d laid to rest many years ago, drags it back out from whatever dark corner of his mind he’d buried those desires in and reignites the longing that had once burned so bright within him. Richie stokes the flame with his careful, gentle hands and breathes life back into parts of himself that he’d thought had been lost to him.

Eddie takes a slow, deep breath and wills the wetness back from his eyes. Under Richie’s tender gaze, he whispers, “Yeah, Rich. You make me happy.”

It is enough to break the dam between them.

Richie reaches for him, wrapping him up in arms that have grown strong, arms that have always been safe. There’s a moment of desperation where they clutch at each other, needy and wanting, the tension between them that had grown so charged from the second Richie had stepped foot into the Jade and came back into Eddie’s world collapsing all at once. The heat of Richie’s body bleeds through both of their clothes, seeping into Eddie’s cold bones and warming him from the inside, one of his arms curling over Eddie’s spine, cupping the nape of his neck in a tender gesture.

Eddie realizes with a start that he’s started trembling, unused to the overwhelming feverish feeling that rocks through him, dizzying his mind and making everything fade to black except for the scorching gentle press of Richie’s fingers to the soft, vulnerable skin at the base of his skull.

He presses his cheek to the junction of Richie’s neck, where his broad shoulder meets the long column of his neck, and feels Richie’s pulse thudding hard under the rough unshaven skin. It’s unmistakably masculine, the way Richie’s stubble feels against his freshly shaven face, and Eddie can’t help the shudder that works through him at the thought.

 _I’m being held by a man_ , he thinks with an internal kind of thrill, deep in the dark pocket of his brain where his most secretive desires lie. _I’m being held by Richie_.

His entire body’s burning up, heart pounding out of control against his ribcage. He forces himself to breathe, a raw drag of air that fills his lungs with Richie’s scent, soap and the underlaying bitterness of cigarette smoke, the musk of cologne, and warmth, so much fucking _heat_ pools low in Eddie’s gut. It’s been so long since he last felt anything even in approximation to this.

His hands shake against Richie’s back, feeling the broad span of it, the shifting of his shoulder blades when he pulls away a little to look at Eddie through the dark. His eyes are mostly adjusted, and— _oh_.

Richie's eyes are calm in the dark, the shadowy sweep of his lashes low and heavy over his dark irises, and Eddie can't help but joke weakly, "bet you can't see shit without your glasses right now, huh?"

Richie's mouth quirks into a private sort of smile. "I can see enough," he says, and strokes his thumb over the highest notch of Eddie's spine, right below the collar of the old soft shirt he's wearing to bed.

He can't help it; he shivers, and Richie's eyebrow arches just a little at the sight.

"Do you remember when we were younger?" Eddie breathes, "Before my mom got the lattice in the garden removed and you couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah," Richie murmurs back, just as hushed, like they're exchanging secrets—which, it had been, back in those days, when they'd barely dared to brush hands in public, much less let anyone know that Richie would wind up in Eddie's bed on a weekly basis, even for a reason as innocent as a nightmare. "You used to complain about how cold my feet were."

"Of course, they were," Eddie says petulantly, and is rewarded by a quiet chuckle from Richie, "You were outside, how could they not have been cold?"

“I wanted,” Richie begins, and then falters. Then he says a little shyly, “I wanted to hold you like this then, too.”

Eddie presses his hands flat to the small of Richie’s back, pulls him a little closer like he’s been wanting to. He just can’t stop _touching_ , dragging his hand down Richie’s side, feeling the soft swell of his hip over his shirt. “Really?” he can’t help but ask, a little in awe.

Richie laughs, and his voice sounds a little wet. “Yeah, really. So fucking bad, I couldn’t even handle it. But it was so fucking scary to even really think about it, and I didn’t want you to have to—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, and when another moment passes of silence, Eddie prompts, “You didn’t want me to?”

Richie just exhales noisily, and his mouth trembles just a little.

“C’mon, Rich,” Eddie coaxes, and presses his hand flat to Richie’s chest, right under his collarbone. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I keep—” Richie fumbles over the words clumsily and tries again. “I keep messing up. I forgot to tell you about the trip until like, three days before, and then I fucked up the room. I wanted you to be able to _choose_ when we would…” he gestures vaguely at the way they’re tangled. “I made you go with me at the drop of a hat to some stupid shit again tonight, and then got drunk and dragged around by a million people. I’ve always been such a mess. I don’t want to make you—I don’t want you to have to deal with it.”

Eddie takes his hand, his embarrassment momentarily forgotten in the face of something much more important. He clasps it to his chest, feels Richie’s long, strong fingers between his own, brushing his sternum through his shirt.

“Rich,” Eddie says gently, and when Richie finally meets his gaze head on, insecurity shining bright in his dark eyes, he squeezes around the hand he’s got pressed over his heart, and doesn’t miss the way Richie’s fingers shake between his own.

He looks like—well, a lot like Eddie had looked in the mirror back in Richie’s guest bathroom that first night in L.A; wary and self-conscious. Afraid of something he’s never been allowed.

“I trust you,” Eddie tells him simply, and means it. Had meant it when Richie was fifteen, rail thin and lanky, and snuck into Eddie’s bedroom through the window to keep him safe, and he means it now, sharing a bed again at forty.

Richie opens his mouth, looking an awful lot like someone about to protest, but Eddie shakes his head and continues, "Listen to me, Richie. You really think I’d be here if I didn’t want to be? You think _you’re_ a mess? Look at me, down a rib and fucked up from my mom and then there’s _Myra_ , and—and I’m trying so hard to be better.”

Eddie suddenly feels so exhausted. Richie’s cradling the nape of his neck so gently that he doesn’t know what to _do_ with himself, watching him with this soft expression that has Eddie’s voice softening marginally when he finishes, “And I know you’re trying too.”

“You’ve always been better than them,” Richie tells him, quiet. “Deserved better.”

Richie tips his face down, their mouths nearly brushing, and for a single heart-stopping moment, with a wild and hopeful kind of want, Eddie thinks that Richie will kiss him.

But Richie sighs instead, and shifts a little against him. “I sure hope you drank some water, or you’re going to have a monster of a headache in the morning.”

The non sequitur makes Eddie blink, and a cold wash of logic filters through his brain. Maybe he’s a little tipsier than he’d thought.

“I’ll take an Ibuprofen,” Eddie says tiredly, and tilts his cheek against Richie’s shoulder. The conversation is over, because Richie deflects like a motherfucker, and because on a deeper level, Eddie knows that now, drunk and about to pass out, is not the time, but he adds quietly against Richie’s throat before he lets himself sleep, “You have to trust me back, Rich.”

**Author's Note:**

> [clown twt](https://twitter.com/tozierCOCK)   
> 


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